It’s been a tumultuous year for the well known lyrics website known as Rap Genius. In November, the National Music Publisher’s Association claimed that lyrics websites like Rap Genius were “blatantly illegal,” thanks to the fact that their main draws of internet traffic are reproduced transcriptions of song lyrics. The squabble with the National Music Publisher’s Association resulted in a few Rap Genius pages and a few entire lyric websites going black, being replaced with a message alerting internet searchers that the websites were not licensed to reproduce an artist’s work.

Rap Genius has thus far avoided a lawsuit with the National Music Publisher’s Association, likely for two reasons. First of all, most professionals, both in the music or entertainment community and in the legal world, believe that lyrics websites are utilizing artists’ words in a manner that falls under fair use. Since reproductions of lyrics are truly no substitute for an actual song recording, artists and record labels have doubtfully suffered any type of loss or damages that would make a lawsuit viable.

Secondly, Rap Genius is simply more reputable than most lyrics websites. Last year, the site received a $15 million round of funding from Silicon Valley investment firm, Andreessen Horowitz. In addition, the site encourages a more interactive approach to its lyric postings, allowing community members to comment on possible song meanings, and urging artists to actually annotate the lyrics of their songs so that readers can know precisely what they mean.

However, now Rap Genius has another enemy beyond music publishing: Google. The search engine company recently removed Rap Genius from the top of some of its search result pages, claiming that the lyrics website had violated fair SEO (search engine optimization) practices. The removal is being viewed by Google as a penalty that will hopefully discourage back alley SEO maneuvers in the future.

For most online organizations, SEO is a vital role of the marketing or writing team, used to drive web traffic – and in connection, business – for companies everywhere. However, according to GuardianLV.com, Rap Genius went beyond the sly keyword strategies that most companies use to define their SEO methods. Allegedly, the lyrics website tried to pay other sites to link to its content. Greater linkage would then boost page rank and would ensure that Rap Genius appeared higher on search result pages.

While Rap Genius didn’t compensate bloggers or web managers with money in most cases – they agreed instead to help drive traffic to  third party bloggers in exchange for linked content – Google still views the arrangement as a shady one. The search engine company says that Rap Genius’s page rank was enhanced through unnatural means, and that therefore, the lyrics site violated the Google SEO rules. Google is encouraging Rap Genius’s third-party partners to remove any links to Rap Genius content, and has removed Rap Genius from numerous top-ranking search result positions to teach the site a lesson.